


Roll Again

by YourGenderHere



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Sad Donia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29917785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourGenderHere/pseuds/YourGenderHere
Summary: Season 12 has ended.Donia Bailey remains in the shadows.She must, once again, confront her hopes.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Roll Again

**Author's Note:**

> This work depicts a mentally and emotionally unstable character.

5.2%.  
Five point two percent.  
Fifty two over one thousand.  
Just a little bit over one in nineteen.

Against my better judgment and strong desire to move on from yet another season of disappointment, I find myself rolling a twenty-sided dice around in my hand.  
Fidgeting with it. Spinning it, as much as it can spin. Feeling the edges, the corners. Running my fingers over the ever-so-slightly raised surface that the paint adds to the faces.  
So: a 1 doesn't count, and is a re-roll. Now it's a d19.  
The die's not weighted. Shouldn't be. It's Math's. Or, used to be. Math would probably unexist Math's self rather than keep around something arithmatically dishonest.  
So it's fair. This is about fairness. It has to be fair.  
My heart is pounding, as if this exercise could change anything.

6.  
That's the number of seasons that I played blaseball. The number of years I spent on the illuminated half of the Immaterial Plane.  
A 6 is not a 20. That's not how it works. Only one of the faces will do. Only 20. 6 isn't good enough. 6 means I'll have to try again.  
When?  
Let's give it, hell, I dunno... 168 seconds. One second for every day in the season.  
That's the kind of symmetry that adds beauty to the cruelty of this outcome.  
So let's set the timer, stare at that die for about three minutes, and think.  
Numbers. It's all numbers. Stars. Stats. Scores. Coins. Peanuts. Rankings on the idol board, that's 20.  
I am numbers.  
My three minutes are up. Time to re-roll.

14.  
168 more seconds on my phone's timer.  
Jaylen. 14 is Jaylen. And also Tillman... no one really cares about Tillman.  
Everyone was talking about Jaylen, they had to, it was going to change everything.  
That one blessing at the top. You'd have to scroll down.  
Almost no one scrolled down.  
Time's up.  
Let's roll.

5.  
Five pitchers. If it's a pitcher, it's one in five for which one.  
It was amazing. Cosmic. Out of all of the Garages pitchers, which one was going to trade places with Jaylen?  
Mike. It had to be Mike.  
It's always Mike. Everything always comes back to Mike.  
I hate him.  
I don't really hate him. I barely know him. He never did anything to me.  
I can't stand him. Famous for being an annoyance. Mr. Love-to-hate-him.  
It's not his fault.  
But what if it hadn't worked? Would-  
Time's up. Ugh. Rolling... 18. Whatever. Timer go.

The blessing only sent Mike to the shadows because of Jaylen, right?  
So what if... what if the plan didn't work.  
Oops! So close! Oh no, the fans overcorrected! It's clear, Jaylen moved to 15 at just the wrong moment. What a shame.  
So the Garages stole... I dunno... Fish Summer? Sure. Whatever. Something like that happened.  
So sad. We almost did it! Well, maybe next season we get to do cool necromancy. Too bad nothing interesting-  
What?! What does that say? Donia Bailey retreated to the shadows? Did that happen to anyone else?  
NO.  
IT DID NOT.  
Only one person. Only one sad, pathetic person, but now we have to pay attention to her, because what if this happens to our best player somehow? New weather? Peanut punishment?  
Time's up.

I can't roll again yet.  
My hand decides to squeeze the die. Squeezes as hard as it can. For a while. For a very, very long time. The pain brings clarity, a minor form of release.  
After I put the die back down I look at the impressions that it left on my palm. They're already fading... nothing lasts. Nothing lasts, not from this.  
This is disgusting. I'm disgusting. I need to get this thing away from me. I toss the die against the wall in front of me as hard as I can.  
Then I realize what I just did.  
I just rolled it again.  
And now I'm torn over whether to look at the face it landed on before I pick it back up.  
Twenty-four years of this, and I should know how not to care about things by now. It's easy. You shut your eyes, cry if you need to, and believe that this was always meant to happen.  
No counterfactuals. No wondering what if things had gone differently, one in fourteen odds to pick me, it didn't have to pick me, it could have been anyone else, anyone at all.  
But it can't pick "anyone". It had to pick SOMEone. That's just how probability works. It's axiomatic, that a die lands on one of its faces when you throw it.  
Which is why it doesn't. Matter.  
I lean over to pick up the die.

That's... that's a 1. It landed on a 1. Which means a re-roll.  
I don't have to keep doing this to myself. I can stop if I want to. I'm stronger than this. Being here hasn't broken me yet.  
"Donia wishes they could believe that, but in the end can't deny that they've cracked."  
I can't tell them the truth though. It'll ruin their plans, get in the way of things, and they can't help me anyway.  
I'm going to have to help myself. Same as from Season 7, Day 1.  
And I've done SUCH a great job of that so far, haven't I?  
You know what? Let's re-roll it after all! Let's see how many times it takes!  
8\. 2. 13. 19. 19. 19. THIS IS INSULTING. 4. 18. 3. 2. 17, 3, 2, 9, 14, 13, 7, 8,  
I lost count of how many rolls that was. Maybe 15? Maybe it's, it's too much.

There are too many numbers. I can't express this in numbers, even though that's all it is.  
Bad roll. You lose. Suffer.  
I'm not sure, actually. Do I even want the odds to be good? If they were good, I'd just feel worse when the outcome didn't go my way.  
At least with a 5.2% you can throw your hands up and say "that's about what I expected."  
Oh.  
That's it. I know what it is.  
It's not that I'm not free. I know I can't have that. I gave up on that a long time ago, and I'm not lying to myself when I think that.  
It's that being here didn't just get 5.2% easier.  
Even though I don't WANT to hope, Blaseball always finds a way to get my attention and dangle a miracle in front of me.  
It could be so easy to get out of here. As easy as rolling this die and getting a 20.  
17.


End file.
